If there were any lingering doubts over Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for
shoving the US back into the smoggy embrace of fossil fuels, his
decision to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines banishes them utterly.

Trump has thrown down the most provocative gauntlet possible to the
environmental movement, which now sees its worst fears crystalizing
within a few days of the inauguration. Those Trump Tower chats with Al
Gore about climate change – and Ivanka Trump’s apparent concern over the
issue – now vanish over the horizon. This will be an aggressively
pro-oil and gas administration, even if that means boiling the planet.

“Donald Trump has been in office for four days and he’s already
proving to be the dangerous threat to our climate we feared he would
be,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the environmental
organisation the Sierra Club.

“Simply put, Donald Trump is who we thought he is: a person who will
sell off Americans’ property and tribal rights, clean air and safe water
to corporate polluters.”

The resurrection of the Keystone XL pipeline will cause particular
anguish among climate activists. Protests over the plan to run the
1,200-mile pipeline from the Canadian tar sands to Texas dogged Barack
Obama throughout his presidency. Finally, in 2015, Obama announced that
the pipeline would not go ahead,
stating that the refusal showed the US is “now a global leader when it
comes to taking serious action to fight climate change”.

That climate leadership is now in danger of being eroded, at a time
when the world’s major polluters must drastically reduce greenhouse gas
emissions if the world is to avoid dangerous global warming. The tribes
and other groups that fought for years against Keystone will now to have
to wearily re-enter the fray against TransCanada, the company behind
the project. Following Obama’s refusal, TransCanada sued the US for
$15bn under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Dakota Access pipeline is a similarly massive pipeline project
that would run from North Dakota to Illinois. The proximity of the
pipeline to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, and its
crossing of the Missouri river, the tribe’s primary source of water,
prompted a protest camp that unified Native American tribes in fierce
opposition, often met with brutal force from the police.

Trump has invested in Energy Transfer Partners,
the company behind Dakota Access, but his spokesman has claimed,
without providing evidence, that the president has now removed this
conflict of interest.

During the 2016 election campaign Trump promised to revive large
energy projects and promised a “a big piece of the profits” for the
American people. Republicans staunchly opposed Obama’s restrictions on
oil and gas development, claiming they held back the US economy. Now,
more extraction looks likely to get the green light, such as drilling
the Arctic Ocean, which Obama banned in his final days in office.

With the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, set to become secretary of state, and a cabinet packed with those who deny the science of climate change,
it perhaps isn’t surprising that Trump has decided to push forward
these projects so early. But Democrats and green groups opposing this
agenda now face fights on a daunting range of fronts, and it’s not
certain that protests over Native American rights and the future
livability of the planet will resonate at all in the White House.

Activists are still trying their best to sound defiant. “It’s a dark
day for reason, but we will continue the fight,” said Bill McKibben,
co-founder of climate activist group 350.org.

“This is not a done deal. The last time around, TransCanada was so
confident they literally mowed the strip where they planned to build the
pipeline, before people power stopped them. People will mobilize
again.”

About Me

*Copyright Disclaimer Under Section
107 of the Copyright Act 1976,
allowance is made for “fair use”
for purposes such as criticism,
comment, news reporting,
teaching, scholarship, and research.
Fair use is a use permitted by copyright
statute that might otherwise be
infringing. Non-profit, educational
or personal use tips the balance in
favor of fair use.